Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr

by Linda Porter

  Yet just one year after he wed Elizabeth, Sir William resigned from his role as comptroller and went back up to Westmoreland. This move may have been necessitated by the unexpected death of Sir John Parr, whose affairs required management. The elder Parr was with Edward IV in France for the campaign of the summer of 1475, but, that period apart, he did not return permanently to court and the personal service of the king again until the end of 1481. His reinstatement in the same office he had held before suggests that his stock had remained high with his royal master. In the six years of his absence, Sir William had worked mainly with Richard, duke of Gloucester, by now the king’s only surviving brother.5 Gloucester had built up a power base in the north during his time as the visible presence of monarchy there and Sir William Parr was, effectively, his lieutenant. Parr’s experience of dealing with the Scots was also important as relations between Edward IV and Scotland declined again in the last years of the king’s reign. Whether Sir William was personally close to the duke, as his brother Thomas had been, is another matter. The unfolding of events in 1483 suggests that William Parr’s loyalty was first and foremost to the Crown and to legitimate descent.

  Although the pursuit of pleasure had broadened Edward IV’s girth and coarsened his youthful bloom, there is nothing to suggest that his health was giving rise to alarm. As late as Christmas 1482 he presided over sumptuous celebrations with his usual hedonistic enjoyment, in the company of his large family, ‘frequently appearing clad in a great variety of most costly garments, of quite a different cut to those which had been usually seen hitherto in our kingdom’, according to the Croyland chronicler. Ever conscious of his public image, Edward would have taken satisfaction in the comment that his dress gave him ‘a new and distinguished air to beholders, he being a person of most elegant appearance, and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person’.6 Even allowing for some judicious flattery, this was clearly a monarch to be noticed and admired. So the sudden onset of serious illness in late March 1483 caused consternation. It may well be that Edward IV suffered a stroke. For eleven days after being stricken he lingered, alert enough mentally to try to reconcile his feuding relatives, aware as he must have been of the difficulties that would ensue for the minority of his son. But there was little doubt that he would not survive, and he died on 9 April, aged only forty. At his funeral, Parr was chosen to play the ceremonial role of man of arms: ‘Sir William Parr, arrayed in full armour, save that his head was bare, and holding in his hand an axe, poll downward, rode up to the choir and, after alighting, was escorted into the church to make his offering as the man of arms’.7 It was Parr’s last service to the king who had contributed so much to the rise of his family.

  The unexpected death of Edward IV plunged England into a deep political crisis that has been the stuff of drama, romance and divided opinion for more than five hundred years. The struggle for power that culminated in the disappearance of two young boys is one of the most fascinating in English history and the mystery that lies at its heart has never been solved. It remains an emotive issue to this day. But it is easy to overlook the impact that the events of the spring and summer of 1483 had on men like Sir William Parr, torn between conscience and expediency as they watched events unfold. In Parr’s case, this led to a decision which could have caused a rift with his wife and her family.

  In the immediate aftermath of Edward’s death it became apparent why, in the colourful language of the late fifteenth century, the collective term for a group of courtiers was a ‘threat’.8 As his struggle with the Woodvilles and the queen became more bitter, the duke of Gloucester, nominated Protector of the Realm, had the full support of Sir William Parr. Lady Fitzhugh, Parr’s mother-in-law, also put pressure on him to follow the duke’s lead, perhaps because she and Elizabeth Parr were close to Gloucester’s wife, Anne Neville, herself the daughter of Parr’s old commander, the earl of Warwick. But these complex family networks were not, eventually, sufficient to persuade Parr that Gloucester’s determination to gain the throne for himself was justified. The ruthless murder, on 13 June 1483, of William, Lord Hastings, one of the late king’s closest friends and most trusted advisers, was the tipping point. Parr was loyal to the institution of monarchy but baulked at the idea of such a usurpation, however much it could be justified in terms of political expediency. He was wise enough to keep such thoughts to himself, though, and his attendance at the coronation of Richard III on 26 June was expected – indeed, he was listed as one of those who would carry a canopy during proceedings. But when the ceremony took place, he was absent. His womenfolk, however, were most definitely there, Lady Parr resplendent in the seven yards of cloth of gold and silk given ‘by the King’s special gift’. Her mother had been provided with material for two gowns, one of blue velvet and crimson satin as well as one of crimson velvet with white damask. It is not known which she wore as she rode behind Queen Anne, one of seven noble ladies given this honour. Elizabeth Parr was swiftly appointed as one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, a further sign of royal favour.

  But while his wife seemed set to uphold the family’s tradition of service in the new regime, Sir William Parr returned, for the last time, to Kendal. He personally wanted no part in King Richard III’s regime. This does not mean that he and Elizabeth had fallen out; they may simply have felt it sensible for her to stay close to those in power, when he could not bring himself to do so. But it is not known whether she ever saw him again. He died in late autumn 1483, aged forty-nine, the last member of his family to reside in Kendal Castle. He had lived through a prolonged period of civil strife and still there seemed no permanent resolution of the dynastic problems that had beset England during his lifetime. He left behind four children, three sons and a daughter, the eldest of whom, his heir, Thomas, was five years old. When Richard III fell at Bosworth Field just two years later, in 1485, Lady Parr, still only twenty-three, faced a most uncertain future.

  Her destiny and that of her young family very much in her own hands, Elizabeth Parr demonstrated very quickly the capacity for balancing pragmatism with personal contentment that characterized her granddaughter sixty years later. She made a second marriage, some time early in the reign of Henry VII. It proved both happy and fruitful for her and gave her children by Parr a settled childhood, as well as improving their prospects in the uncertain landscape of the new Tudor England. Sir Nicholas Vaux of Harrowden in Northamptonshire, her second husband, was a member of an old Lancastrian family. His mother, a Frenchwoman, had been one of Margaret of Anjou’s ladies and his father had died fighting for the queen at Tewkesbury. He had close links to the countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII. In the new order, he cancelled out Elizabeth Parr’s awkward Yorkist past perfectly. It was an inspired match.

  Thomas Parr and his siblings thrived in the congenial atmosphere of their extended family. Three daughters were born to Elizabeth and Nicholas, but no boys, and Thomas grew close to his stepfather. As the years went by, and Henry VII’s hold on his throne, shaky at first, was tightened, Thomas was carefully educated and prepared to take his place at court. Nicholas Vaux had been brought up in the household of the king’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, a woman of outstanding intellect and strong character, who was a notable patron of humanist scholars. The endowments she gave to Cambridge University, and St John’s College in particular, helped develop the ideas of many of the leading intellectuals of the last two decades of Henry VIII’s reign, men who would play a significant part in shaping religious reform and the education of Henry VIII’s younger children. It has been suggested that Thomas Parr himself was placed in Margaret Beaufort’s establishment at Colyweston, Northamptonshire, where other young gentlemen were sent to be educated by the Oxford scholar Maurice Westbury. Colyweston was close to Vaux’s estates and his own connection with Margaret Beaufort during his childhood makes it entirely possible that he would have wanted his stepson to follow in his footsteps.

  Thomas Parr was given a classical education in Latin and Gre
ek, and he also acquired all the polish and poise that would be required by a courtier. He may well have spoken French and other European languages, as was expected of gently-bred young men. All this would no doubt have pleased his father, though Sir William might have regretted his son’s lack of interest in the steadily crumbling castle of Kendal itself. When he came into his inheritance in 1499, Thomas Parr was well aware that most of what his family had gained from their Yorkist connections had been taken back by the Crown. He would need to use his very considerable charm and courtly skills to stay close to those in power. But as the new century dawned he had reason to be optimistic. England was changing, and constant upheaval seemed to be a thing of the past. He could rebuild the family fortunes. And a first step on that road was to make, as both his parents had done, a good marriage.

  FORTUNE FAVOURED Thomas Parr in his search for a suitable heiress. The opportunity that came his way was brought about by the death in the Tower of London in 1506 of Sir Thomas Green, a landowner from Northamptonshire whose curmudgeonly nature had led to charges of treason against Henry VII. The accusations may well have been unjustified. It was a time when disputes with neighbours were commonplace and frequently turned violent. Recourse to law to settle differences kept the legal profession busy. The blustering Sir Thomas had clearly miscalculated the effect of his aggressive behaviour and his health failed during his captivity. He left behind him two orphaned daughters, Anne and Matilda, heiresses to considerable wealth and an uncertain future. Within a year of her father’s death, Thomas Parr purchased the wardship and marriage of the younger girl, fifteen-year-old Matilda, known as Maud. In 1508 he married her and, at about the same time, his stepfather Nicholas Vaux, by then himself a widower, married Maud’s sister, Anne. This arrangement may appear calculated and no doubt it was, but it also brought happiness and security to the Green sisters, whose children grew up and were educated together in the close family relationship that Thomas Parr had enjoyed as a child. Through several generations, the intricate ties of their cousins and half-siblings would underpin the social standing of the Parr and Vaux families in Tudor England.

  Maud Green came from good Yorkist stock. Her maternal great-grandfather, Sir John Fogge, had been treasurer of the royal household between 1461 and 1468, in the first part of Edward IV’s reign and would have known Thomas Parr’s father, though it is unlikely they had been friends. Fogge was a Woodville henchman and liked to throw his weight around in a manner bordering on intimidation. On both sides, Maud’s male forebears were an unpleasant lot. Yet she, happily, inherited the positive side of her father’s attributes, all his confidence and passion and determination, without the tendency to make enemies. Thomas Parr must have known from the moment they met that her education and spirit, as well as her inheritance, were a good match for him. For despite Sir Thomas Green’s inability to get on with his neighbours, he had not neglected the education of his daughters. Maud was fluent in French and probably read Latin as well. The age difference mattered much less than what she had in common with her husband. Certainly he did not treat her like a chattel and she no doubt appreciated the fact that this man twice her age, who had literally bought her, was refined enough not to rush her into the marriage bed before she had got used to him. It was clear that they would complement one another well. But their destiny depended on others. The key to their future together lay in Thomas Parr’s careful cultivation of the teenage Prince Henry, the heir to the throne.

  The Parrs’ situation was transformed by the death of the old king in April 1509. As part of Henry VIII’s coronation honours, Thomas was created a Knight of the Bath. This social recognition no doubt pleased the new Lady Parr but, more crucially, it was soon followed by the waiving of some of the huge debt which had bound her husband (and many others of his background) to the Tudor dynasty. At the time of Henry VIII’s accession, Thomas Parr owed the Crown almost £9,000, the equivalent of £4.5 million today. Much of this was for title to lands in Westmoreland, but part, of course, was for Maud herself. The king’s generosity brought most welcome relief. Such actions may have endeared Henry VIII to his debtor lords, but his father, who had built a full Treasury on calling in these feudal rights, would not have approved.

  Henry VIII’s relationship with his courtiers was all together different. They were companions and friends, only slightly less gorgeous than the handsome prince himself. He loved display and he wanted his court to reflect his youthful energy and love of magnificence. In this respect, he owed much to the flair and love of public show exhibited by his grandfather, Edward IV. The young king was determined to enjoy himself, to find outlets for his restive physicality and his love of music and composition. In these early days of the reign, during the summer progress of 1510, he passed his days ‘shooting [archery], singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar, playing at the recorders, flute, virginals, and in setting of songs, making of ballads, and did set two goodly masses, every of them of five parts, which were sung oftentimes in his chapel and afterwards in diverse other places. And when he came to Woking, there were kept both jousts and tournays. The rest of this progress was spent in hawking, hunting and shooting.’9

  Henry’s court was soon provided with that other prerequisite of the medieval ideal to which he aspired: a queen and her ladies. Katherine of Aragon married Henry in a private ceremony on 11 June. Their joint coronation followed on Midsummer’s Day. The Spanish princess, marooned in England since the death of Henry’s elder brother, Prince Arthur, some seven years earlier, now became the wife of the boy who had escorted her into St Paul’s Cathedral on her first wedding day. This sounds romantic, but the truth was much less so. Katherine did not know the young king well and had been kept apart from him during the prolonged wrangling over her future between her own father, Ferdinand of Aragon, and Henry VII. There had been hard bargaining over the payment of the long overdue remainder of her marriage portion before vows were finally exchanged. She was nearly six years older than Henry VIII; not a huge difference, but he was barely eighteen when he ascended the throne and Katherine seems to have thought, with justification, that she knew more of the world than he did. She was never prepared to play the role of invisible queen consort, as Elizabeth of York, so briefly her mother-in-law, had done in the previous reign. But she was happy to wear the king’s favours as he jousted, to worry over the injuries he sustained (which were to cause him great pain many years later) and to be his consort. Petite and goldenhaired, she was an attractive young woman with an unmistakable air of regality. Katherine was the perfect foil to her husband’s exuberance. Her contentment, with just a hint of indulgence, is apparent in the letter she wrote to her father, telling him that the days were passed ‘in continual festival’.

  So these were good times for those families accustomed to serve. Both Sir Thomas and Lady Maud Parr were able to take full advantage of the openings for people of their background and social skills. They were often at court, participating in entertainments and disguisings, enjoying life to the full. Thomas and his younger brother, William Parr, were close companions of the king, part of the charmed circle surrounding the new monarch. They kept company with the Staffords and the Nevilles, the Carews and a diplomat-knight of Norfolk origin, Sir Thomas Boleyn. Amusement was constant, luxury unabashed. Henry had an innate grasp of the importance of image. The Venetian ambassador described his glittering appearance with awe: ‘his fingers were one mass of jewelled rings and around his neck he wore a gold collar from which hung a diamond as big as a walnut’.10 The business of government he found irksome, but the possibilities of diversion were ever present. Typical of his rumbustious approach to life was his foray into the queen’s chambers in Westminster one January morning in 1510, his entourage dressed as Robin Hood’s men, bent on getting the ladies to dance. There was always about him something of the air of a practical joker (he used the same approach to impress a startled Anne of Cleves at their first meeting thirty years later, with such unfortunate results), but if the king’s det
ermination for such good cheer was occasionally oppressive, his companions knew better than to criticize. All seemed set fair for the Parrs. They preferred to follow the court rather than establish their residence in any one place.

  While her husband used his charm and courtier’s training, Maud became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine and served her faithfully for the rest of her life, from the heady early days of the reign through the testing time of the 1520s, until Maud’s death in 1531. Theirs was a relationship that went much deeper than giddy pleasure. Both women knew what it was like to lose children in stillbirths and in infancy. During the first year of her marriage, Katherine had a late miscarriage, which pride and gynaecological ignorance refused to acknowledge. It began a pattern of failed pregnancies and infant deaths for which only the Princess Mary, born in 1516, was an exception. And Maud, too, suffered as many mothers did in those days. She conceived shortly after she married Thomas Parr and bore him a son. But any happiness at the arrival of an heir was fleeting; the child died young and not even his name is known. Then, between 1512 and 1515, three healthy children came in close succession. The eldest of these was a girl. She was christened Katherine, after the queen, who may also have been her godmother.

  THE PRECISE DATE of Katherine Parr’s birth is not known but there is general agreement that it was probably some time in August 1512. The following year saw the arrival of her brother, William. Two years later a second daughter, Anne, was born. Despite their father’s northern background, the Parrs grew up in the south of England. Kendal Castle was already falling into disrepair and it is not likely that Maud Parr would have struggled to the north of England for the birth. Her husband, though mindful of his family’s origins in Westmoreland, never wanted to live there. It was too far from the centre of things. Nor does he seem to have desired to establish a pre-eminent residence among the properties he owned elsewhere. His base was very much London and the house he owned in Blackfriars, which was probably where Katherine was born.